Category Archives: political news

political news

Wanting to shed politics

Those who know me only through my blog or from what I used to do for a living, which was write and edit opinion pieces for newspapers, seem to believe I am wedded to politics.

That I cannot live a day without talking politics with … someone, anyone.

Not true. There are days, such as today, when I want to set all that aside. So, I am going to do that very thing for the rest of the day.

I plan to spend the day with my wife, sons, our daughter-in-law and our granddaughter. We are going to yuk it up in the house and carry on without a worry in the world.

Then I suppose I’ll get back to the regular stuff in the morning. However, I won’t guarantee it. You see, I ain’t addicted to politics.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

local news, political news, State news

Texas’s newest residents get stiffed

Texas is going to get two more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Why? Because our state grew significantly during the past 10 years.

The population boom was fueled by more African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians flocking to the state. The word is that these folks generally vote Democratic. So, it was believed that the state’s changing demography was going to make the state more, um, divided politically.

Well, the Legislature took care of that by gerrymandering the new congressional and legislative districts to ensure that the Republican Party maintains its chokehold on power.

The Legislature takes command of the redistricting effort every decade. The 2020 census shows the state achieving additional power in Congress with those two new seats. However, Republicans are big winners, given the way the Legislature reconfigured all those boundaries.

Collin County, where I now reside, was turned into an even heavier GOP-friendly place; Collin County voted narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020, but would have voted significantly more for the ex-POTUS had the new borders been in effect.

I am scratching my noodle on this one. Is this the way “representative democracy” is supposed to work?

I think not.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

GOP takeover doesn’t necessarily doom Democrats

As I watch the political landscape take shape heading into the 2022 midterm election, I cannot help but think of what happened in 2010.

What’s that, you ask? Here’s what happened.

President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and got to work repairing the economic free-fall that was occurring while getting Congress to approve the Affordable Care Act.

Congress spent a ton of money to fix the economy and it approved the ACA by a narrow margin. The 2010 midterm election loomed. Republicans were loaded for bear. They delivered what Obama said was a “shellacking” by taking control of the House of Representatives.

President Obama wasn’t disheartened. He ran for re-election in 2012 and with the wind blowing in his face, he defeated Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin.

Obama’s approval rating wasn’t ever all that great. Yet he served two successful terms as POTUS.

Now comes President Biden facing the wrath of voters. The GOP might be poised to deliver another pounding to the president and his party next year. Does that mean the end of the Biden presidency? Does it deliver a mortal wound to his agenda? Does it set the stage for a Republican victory in 2024? No, no and no!

I will hold out hope that the GOP in its current configuration — the party has turned into a cabal of cultists — will turn off enough voters to forestall any more coup attempts such as the one launched by the most recent Republican POTUS.

Let us hope for the best … shall we?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

Mend, don’t end, filibuster

As a general rule I am inclined to oppose ridding the U.S. Senate of the filibuster, which gives senators in the minority a way to block legislation they oppose.

However, I am strongly in favor of amending the Senate rule. Instead of allowing a single senator to “filibuster” a bill simply by signing on to a measure to block it, the Senate needs to require senators to stand on the floor and talk the bill to death.

Make ’em hold the floor for as long as they can while they blab and blather on and on. That’s the way filibusters used to occur. Senators would yap and yammer for hours on end, collapsing at times, while they sought to talk legislation into oblivion.

Democrats want to rid the Senate of the filibuster. Republicans are standing firm in their support of the legislative rule. What might happen, though, after the 2022 election if Republicans get control of the Senate, pushing Democrats into the minority?

I can see a scenario where Republicans would want to deny Democrats a tool to block legislation, while Democrats would perform a one-80 and seek to keep the rule intact.

It’s not written into the U.S. Constitution. The filibuster is a Senate rule. It has been abused by senators who “filibuster” legislation without ever having to talk it to death. Make them use the rule the way it was intended.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

If only he could rise above the bitterness

There are times when one can wish that even the most venal and vile politicians among us can rise to some level of dignity and decorum.

The death of noted statesmen, such as Colin Powell, easily qualifies as a motive to rise above pettiness and petulance. Powell, the nation’s first black secretary of state, died Monday of COVID complications.

Four of the five living former presidents managed to offer heartfelt salutes and tributes to the former general, as did the current president, Joe Biden.

Then came this bit of bullsh** from the 45th president of the United States. Donald Trump issued a brief statement that reads:

“Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”

There. Isn’t that just the kind of cheap shot, the trash, the rhetorical crap we have come to expect from Trump? Yes. It is.

To think that the King of RINO World would exhibit the chutzpah to call Colin Powell a Republican In Name Only speaks to the utter worthlessness of Donald Trump as a political public figure.

I would say “shame on Trump” … except that he has no shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Ex-POTUS turns his phony fraud case to Texas

The Donald Trump phony vote fraud fishing expedition has cast its line into our neighborhood.

What a … joke!

The Texas secretary of state’s office, kowtowing to demands from the former Liar in Chief’s team, has announced an audit of 2020 presidential election returns in four of the state’s largest counties: Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin. Three of the four counties have something in common: Voters in Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties cast most of their votes for Joe Biden; Collin County, where my wife and I live, voted narrowly for Biden’s opponent, the 45th POTUS.

Not surprisingly, officials in the three pro-Biden counties have proclaimed it a political ploy. Collin County Judge Chris Hill — a Republican and a supporter of the 45th POTUS — so far is silent. Imagine that, eh?

This is an exercise in grotesque stupidity.

Texas 2020 election audits called political ploy by county officials | The Texas Tribune

The former POTUS carried Texas by about 5 percentage points. He now is demanding that Gov. Greg Abbott add a “forensic audit” of the state’s returns to the Texas Legislature’s special session agenda.

What the former Numbskull in Chief continues to do is denigrate the hard work of county elections officials in those counties — along with those who worked in all the rest of the state — who produced a patently safe, fraud-free, legal and fair election.

How many times must we all say this: There was no “widespread voter fraud” in Texas! However, the Big Lie lives on in what passes for the minds of the cultists who swill the poison being served by the former POTUS.

This is a disgrace to our democratic form of government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national security, political news

Yearning for GOP return

Am I allowed to declare that I am yearning for a significant political revolution?

I am going to do so anyway. I want the Republican Party to return to what it used to be: a party based on principle and ideology, not one that is fused to the personality of a cult leader who threatens real Republicans with retribution if they don’t profess blind loyalty to him.

Let’s stipulate something up front. I have no intention of endorsing whatever ideology a newly reborn Republican Party endorses. I remain a proud member of what I prefer to call the “good government progressive movement.” My politics tilt left, but I am not above endorsing compromise when and where it serves the greatest good.

The GOP today doesn’t adhere to the good government notion of anything. It is wedded to this nut job who occupied the presidency for a single term before he got drummed out of office by President Biden.

Why lament the absence of a real, honest-to-goodness Republican Party? Because I long have favored a strong two-party system that keeps both major parties alert. We don’t have that kind of political process at work at this moment. We have one party of ideas — the Democrats — doing battle with a cult following that operates under the Republican Party banner.

For starters, I now shall declare (for the umpteenth time) my intense desire for the leader of that cult — the aforementioned single-term, twice-impeached POTUS — to be kicked off the political stage.

Then we might see a return to some sort of political debate over ideas. Let the two parties argue without fear of being defamed, denigrated and defiled by a former POTUS who — if he had any sense of decency — would acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election … and then disappear.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, political news

Add a word to your shirt

BRENHAM, Texas — It didn’t surprise me in the least to see a dipsh** walking around the Washington Country Fairgrounds wearing a shirt that had a message that sought to stick in the eye of those of us who insist on getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

We traveled to the center of some folks’ political universe. I swear I saw more “Trump-Pence: Make America Great” lawn signs and banners than I have seen in a good while.

Back to the moron and his t-shirt.

The shirt in part read: Unafraid, Unapologetic, Unvaccinated. There was a fourth “un”-word, but I cannot remember it now.

My thought when I saw this clown was that he should have added another term. That would be “uncaring.” He doesn’t care about his loved ones who might become exposed to the virus he might be backing around at this very moment.

We stayed far away from this clown.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

Choose wisely, Californians

2 Comments

The simple truth is that by all rights I shouldn’t give a rat’s rear end about the outcome of an upcoming recall election out yonder in California.

Except that I do care.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to stave off a recall effort that was launched by far-right-wing nut jobs angry over how he conducted himself during the first height of the COVID-19 pandemic; Newsom had the bad form to attend a dinner party where there were few masks covering the mugs of those who were attending.

Public opinion polling has indicated that Newsom well might survive this effort to remove him. The mood is pretty volatile out west, though, from what I have been able to gather.

What might save Newsom’s backside is the emergence of a nut job/fruitcake/wacko as the Republican favorite to succeed Newsom if somehow the governor fails to get a majority to agree to keep him in office.

I refer to talk-show gasbag Larry Elder, a guy I once considered to be a mainstream conservative. Not any longer. This clown — one of 45 individuals seeking to succeed Newsom — has swallowed the Big Lie about the 2020 election being pilfered from the 45th POTUS. He also is a COVID vaccine denier and has demonstrated a clear and unmistakable misunderstanding of how government is supposed to work in the nation’s most populous state.

California is about as progressive a state as there is in this great country of ours. Yet the governor there got himself into a bit of a jam. The emergence of a right-winger who’s nuttier than a Snickers bar, just might stir Gov. Newsom’s base of supporters to actually vote to keep him office.

A state that were it an independent nation would possess the world’s fifth-largest economy needs to be governed by someone who knows what the hell he is doing.

Choose wisely, Californians. The country is watching you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news, political news

A silver lining in the vote fraud scam?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to make a declaration I never thought I could make, as it involves the 45th president of the United States, aka the ex-Moron in Chief.

All this scandalous nonsense about the security of the 2020 presidential election is going to produce future election cycles that no one is likely to be able to challenge at any level.

I credit the 45th POTUS for the security we will witness in real time of future elections: for president, for Congress, for state legislatures, for countywide office, for municipal and school district office.

Our attention has been riveted on the issue of election security. Granted, I do not buy for one second the veracity of the allegations that the 45th POTUS has leveled at the 2020 presidential election. I do, though, buy into the notion that our state and county elections officials’ alert levels have risen to unprecedented levels.

The future of our electoral system, I submit without reservation, actually looks brighter because we have spent so much time in this post-election period discussing the issue of ballot security.

I cannot begin to predict that there won’t be some crackpot in the future who will raise the noxious stink that POTUS 45 has raised since losing the 2020 election. He lost it bigly: 7 million ballots and a 306-232 tally in the Electoral College. He keeps yammering about vote fraud, but produces not a shred of evidence to substantiate his slanderous attacks on the electoral process.

There has been a positive result, though. I am quite certain the ex-Numbskull in Chief has elevated electoral security awareness all along the political chain of command. I have known many county clerks in Texas and Oregon who have worked themselves to near-collapse seeking to protect the integrity of the voting process. They have done their jobs well and with honor. Thus, they do not deserve to be slandered in the manner they have suffered from the mouth of POTUS 45.

They will no doubt redouble their efforts in the future.

I am certain our electoral process will remain secure, safe and legal.